Aboard the Khonsu

[Big Bison Bessie]

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Forbes smiled and nodded. "Mobile fabrication? I've overseen a few field jobs, mostly repair, hardly a build of this scale in the field. One of the more notable ones was working on the Mafdet. Me and a crew had been sent over after she took a torpedo hit out in Delta maybe, eighteen months ago I think? Stayed on as Chief Engineer for about two weeks after that. Though, I've had more than my fair share of experience as a shipwright." She led them through another door as she spoke. "I was one of the foremen at Carthage for a time. Second shift leader on drydock A. This one here. And, uh, don't worry, it's all powered down, it's safe to go inside." She pointed towards one of the blast doors down the hall, this red one looked up armored and had a big label on it: 'WARNING: VARIABLE GRAVITY' with the small stylized image of a man tumbling beneath the words. In equally big and dramatic print across the door it read: 'DANGER: DO NOT OCCUPY WITH DRIVE ENGAGED'. The airlock opened up to a large, cylindrical hall with a massive structure running through the middle of it. Massive rings lined with power capacitors, a half dozen of them, circled around the walls of the room around the core that ran through it. Literal tons of machinery and electronics sat quietly around them, no doubt yearning for purpose and use. "But uh, Captain Ross, she managed to convince me to go with her. She got the approval of the brass, of course. Her and the higherups wanted someone with enough experience and knowledge of the ship to serve as her Chief Engineer with her working so far from Carthage. Sure, we could grab a tech from one of the other Osiris class ships, but I oversaw a third of this girl's construction, so I already knew her from stem to stern." "Though, I dunno much about the Void itself, at least not in the way you seem to speak over it with such reverence." The walkway curved, and Forbes led them seemingly up the side of the wall as she gestured around herself. "For me, I'm all about the machines more-so than the physics of space-time manipulation and spatial anomalies and all that. That'd fall more in line with Doctor Blackwood's work. I just solve the practical problems down here. Like this thing. The Kishiro K-4 jumpdrive, or what we've turned it into. It's the number 4 ring down there that's causing us grief." She pointed down the chamber, towards a unit down closer to the opposite end of the core.

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